PAINTING V. THE FILM

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21903, 2 October 1936, Page 5

PAINTING V. THE FILM

PAUL ROTHA’S REPLY

AN INTERESTING CONTROVERSY IS THE CINEMA A DRUG? Most drugs that relieve one of anything are now marked “Poison” by the chemist, and they are obtainable only with a doctor’s prescription and after solemn entry in a book. They are marked “Poison” because they are poison. But they may also keep one from madness, and on occasion they may actually save one’s life. In this way R. H. Wilenski, noted art critic, begins an essay in the “Studio” on “Painting v. the Film.” Extracts from his essay and also from an essay in reply by Paul director of the Strand Film Company, London, are printed herewith: —

The drug which is known as “The pictures” is a poison of this sort, writes Mr Wilenski. But it is obtainable in any quantity without a doctor s prescription. Addicts can absorb it all day if they want to, or if, through good or evil fortune, they have nothing else to do. This drug gives relief to millions of people every week; it relieves them from thinking; it provides them with something unreal about which they can talk nonsense, and thus protects them from the danger of trying to tplk about real things with some sense. Like asoirin, cocaine, and so forth, it is a boon and a bussing to the average sensual man. But it is none the less a poisonous drug with millions of adEvery artist each morr&ng _ has to compete with the modern moving camera if he attempts to record the life around him in terms verifiable by addicts of “The Pictures.” He has to talk the camera’s language, he., to represent phenomena in terms of light and shade as seen by the camera s l ens __a n d he has to compete by a single still impression with the thousand and one impressions of the subject which the moving camera can give. » What remains to the artist? Just this: It is still his to create something which is in every part and aspect as much a part'of him as his toes or his nose; to make colour that will live with his own particular sensation of colour; to draw lines that will live with his own life from start to finish, lines drawn with passionate intensity in the knowledge, as Cocteau says, that a line, which is to live in a picture, risks death at every point in its course 'as an acrobat risks death at every minute. If he is really a creative artist ne will leave to the camera all the tasks that a camera, in the hands of the most intelligent man alive, can perform; and he will regard the camera and the camera-man with no shadow of envy, knowing well that neither photograph nor film ever has been, or ever will be, a work of art, in any sense or degree, because at the vital moment (the moment when the thought sensation in the man behind the camera is given form) the machine and not the man is in control.

We' in movie had bought that the silly comparison between painting and. film was as dead as that between film and theatre, writes Paul Rotha in reply. Their aims, their scope, their place in our national life (and in that internationalism which we are striving to create) are widely different. , To ask the painter to compete with the film camera by painting realistically is waste of time. It is like asking pilots to fly their aeroplanes along the ground and motorists to drive in the sky. But before attacking the cinema, Mr Wilenski, you must first learn what cinema is. You seem to think that the camera is movie's only instrument. You assess its powers only by its ability to record mechanically what is placed before it. You forget that the moviecamera’s power of recording is the least important part of film making. You ignore movie’s power to create imagery, to interpret meanings in terms of movement, to cross-section and bring alive the modern world in all its human relationships. As you are perhaps one of those critics of the cinema who seldom trouble to see films, you are unaware that in the modern film sound is as important as picture. »Thus you will know nothing of movie’s use of poetry, of chorus, or of imagistic sound. The material recorded on to celluloid. both sound and picture, is so much dead wood out of which movie is made to live by purely creative means. What is more important is Mr Wilenski’s social reference. So we learn that movie relieves the masses from thinking? We all, I think, must agree to a certain extent But why blame the medium. Blame instead, not the artists who are trying to use -the movie, but the system by which the medium is, for the time being, controlled. It is futile, Mr Wilenski, to implore your painters to compete with the cinema or any other form of art. Instead, enlist them in this struggle, whereby all art forms, including the film, are being used to bring all art creation on to a decent and dignified basis of production. Let them look closely to their materials, marshal their creative skill, and discover just what place painting and sculpture and drawing can usefully occupy in our modern world. And if the answer be none, then let them get out and be humble enough to seek other jobs in other forms of art. They will gain nothing by imitation.